


Dearest Departed

by MadHattress



Category: Baccano!
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-08
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-20 15:52:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadHattress/pseuds/MadHattress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years after their marriage, Jacuzzi mourns and breaks a promise. Nice comforts from afar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dearest Departed

**Author's Note:**

> Dunno if this perfectly fits with canon. I haven't seen the series in a year... but, I wanted to make a little something for an adorable pairing(even if their names are rather... silly. Forgive me?

"H-hey there, Nice."

There was no response other than the whistling of an autumn breeze, but Jacuzzi wasn't surprised. He didn't really expect one. Of course, he gave her a little slack considering she was six feet under the ground he was standing on. It was definitely an excuse to be hard of hearing. The main reason he had even bothered with a salutation, besides something of a formality, was simply that it had been such a long time since he had uttered those three words out loud. The words were almost foreign to his tongue and he stumbled over them with slight discomfort.

This concerned him, to already have forgotten what it felt like to greet her out loud. It was foreboding. What if other traits about her would begin to slip away in time as well, like the sound of her laugh, or even how she looked? Had he already forgotten? Jacuzzi strained to remember these details, but the results were not calming. It was too painful a prospect to imagine, so he sto pped. He continued on with his one sided conversation, fists clenching and unclenching involuntarily.

"I guess it has been a while, hasn't it? Almost a year now and this is the first time I've actually been to your place. I really hope you'll forgive me for not coming around before." He paised, pretending to wait for reassurance. Though he knew very well none would come (and none did), his heart couldn't help but ache as if she was purposefully ignoring him. "Please don't think it's because I forgot about you, or that I don't miss you. Because I do miss you. Oh, boy, I do! It feels like a part of my life has been ripped away, Nice, without you here with me. And I'd give up what remains just to bring you... to bring you..."

A lump in his throat prevented him from finishing the sentence. He took deep breaths, not dissimilar to the ones of a drowning man struggling for air, until he felt he could regain control of his voice.

"I just couldn't bring myself to step foot in the cemetary. Believe me, I tried a buncha times but whenever the gates in front came into sight, I would turn right around back home. I could practically hear all of the people who called me a coward, or a chicken, in the back of my head. I felt like just breaking down and crying like I used to. You remember?" He tried to manage a smile, but it came out a grimace. "But I didn't. I haven't shed a single tear, 'cause I know you wouldn't want me to."

He kicked a stone with his foot. "It's not that I was afraid of the ghosts or grave robbers or anything. I'd risk that to visit you any day, Nice. It's just... I couldn't bear the thought of someone like you being trapped in a place so dark and cold for the rest of your days. It's such a lonesome way to spend eternity." He looked up towards the sky, placing a hand in his coat pocket. "I guess I wanna pretend you're up there throwing darts with the best of 'em up in heaven, if there is an afterlife at all." He laughed softly, in spite of himself that was soon replaced with a brooding look. "Well, no. That's not entirely true, I guess. I just wanted to escape from reality as long as I possibly could. Didn't want to admit that you're really... d... dea...'

Nope. Still couldn't admit it.

"Gone," he amended quickly.

He shifted his feet from side to side, no place to look but the ground. Specifically, her grave. It would be a cruel exaggeration of the truth to even refer to the hovel a grave. Amongst the formidible looking gargoyle statues and towering graves of stone reaching up to the heavens lay a flat grave run over by weeds and layers of dirt until it was hardly recognizable as a gravestone at all. And by no standards a proper one.

Was this Nice's final resting spot? Not even close. Oh, if only the world were so kind! No, hers was to the far right of the one described above and in a great deal worse shape. A simple plaque of wood shooting up from the gr ound with a faded name written in ink (surely you can guess which one) was the only sign that such a woman existed, let alone that her body lay below. It was as low as a beggar's grave: it was that of a thief's.

If only it was known that the woman buried underneath was so much more than what her criminal records supplied!

"Jessie's doing well, in case you were wonderin'," he blurted out suddenly, then back tracked. "Our little boy. I know you probably don't remember him more than the squirmy, bald headed baby but he's been sprouting like a weed lately! He's everything you wanted in a child and more. The other day, he learned to walk around... well, it's more of a waddle, really, but it's adorable." He chuckled with the adoration every parent possesses for their child. "And he looks like a regular angel. He's lucky he got your looks and not mine, in that aspect."

Jacuzzi's eyes brightened, but the light was closer to delusion than that of joy. "And d'you know... d'you know what his first word was? The first thing our little Jessie said, Nice? Of course you don't but I'm gonna tell you anyways. I dunno where he got it, or... or why he chose to, but I just about lost it when he said it. It... it was..."

He dropped to his knees, no longer able to control the overflow of heart wrencing agony that had been pooling ever since the cops had shown up at Jacuzzi's door eight months ago with their cold formalities and condolences that could never bring her back into his arms. Ever since the he learned how slow and agonizing her end had come, a single shot to the stomach. Ever since he had heard from the autopsy directors she was expecting another child that would never have a chance to see the light of day, a baby girl.Ever since he had realized in a stunned daze that Jessie would probably never remember how his mother used to rock him to sleep every night and sing the most beautiful lullabies.

But especially since the moment the thought came that they would never grow old together.

He sobbed for the first time in years, letting them rack his shoulders up and down and not bothering to care that the tears were staining her plaque and muddling up the words even further. He cried for Nice's suffering in her last moments and the fear she must have gone through during them. Louder they rose as the thoughts turned to his son who would never know what it was like to have the comfort a mother brings. His shoulders heaved even harder for the loneliness he had felt ever since she left, and for the part of his soul he would never get back.

"I-t-t-t w-a-as-" He stuttered between shuddering breaths. "M-m-ma-mm-aaa--"

The wind picked up in speed and surrounded him, like a frigid embrace. It whirled around him, picking up leaves in it's circle. The sound, if he strained his ears, was gentle and almost tinged with sadness. He wanted to pretend it was her, more than anything... wanted to be given a sign that she still cared... but he knew it was simply the wind, and nothing more.Still, it snapped him back to the present effectively.

Jacuzzi picked himself up from the ground, sure he had finally lost it. Of course the wind hadn't said anything. Wind didn't talk and if it did, it would have better things to say than it's r. He shuffled out of the cemetery, head down, wiping the wetness off of his face. A red blush was beginning to creep up on his cheeks and he frowned, vowing it to be the last time he cried for the second time in his life. The first time it was partially for the woman he loved (as well as for himself) and the second, it was for her son. He needed to be strong for Jessie, of course. It was one thing to break a promise when he had nothing to lose. Nice wouldn't want him turning into a quivering lump of tears over her when there was a child dependant on him now. As the entrance to the gate loomed overhead, he rested one hand on a bar and turned back.

"I'll come back on our anniversary, okay?" he said questioningly. "I don't think I'd be able to come sooner than that. "

He knew Nice'd understand and didn't bother waiting for the impossibility of a response this time. Without looking back, he stepped onto the sidewalk and got lost into a crowd of people, whispering to himself. "See ya soon, Nice."

He smiled to himself, content, and got lost in the mob that was the streets of Chicago.

A moment after he left, a fog began to condense over the grave until it heightened and took the vague shape of a human, almost feminine in figure. It tilted it's head to the side, and then nodded, as if pleased. Sooner than it had arrived, it collapsed back into the ground and the plaque was all that remained, in patient waiting for his next visit.

 

End.


End file.
